Mobile telecommunications has seen an explosive growth within just the last decade and is expected to continue this growth trend into the future. Whereas mobile communications began in its infancy stages as primarily providing voice only communications, today's mobile communications has by necessity grown in complexity and capacity to accommodate the increasingly demanding requirements of not only voice transfer, but also data transfer in its many forms, such as messaging and browsing.
As the telecommunications industry develops technology to keep pace with the ever increasing demands of its users, a hybridization of the mobile subscriber's interface to the mobile communications network is taking place. The mobile terminal is transforming from a handheld voice communications device into a data portal that is increasingly being used to provide and consume a growing number of services and applications. As such, the mobile terminal is transforming into a digital assistant that transcends the role of a mobile terminal, by providing increasingly complex mobility functions that are inherently facilitated by the mobile terminal.
Inherent with the growing role of mobile terminals, however, is the growing number of interface capabilities that must be maintained within the mobile terminals to satisfy the communication needs of their owners. For example, along with the standard cellular communication interfaces provided by today's mobile terminals, are other wired interfaces, such as USB or Firewire, and wireless interfaces, such as Bluetooth, Near Field Communication (NFC), and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), that are also provided to facilitate the proximity communication functionality of today's mobile terminal.
As the number of communication interfaces increases, however, so does the number of hardware and software resources that are required to facilitate them. Accordingly, the amount of power that is required to operate the resources also increases. Furthermore, if all supported interfaces are required to be active while the mobile terminal is powered on, then a cumulative power drain is created with each interface that is activated. Still further, with each interface that is kept active, the security risk and radio interference caused by each active interface potentially increases.
An exemplary network in which a number of devices having a number of concurrently active interfaces is a Personal Area Network/Body Area Network (PAN/BAN). A PAN is the interconnection of information technology devices within a proximity range to one another to form an ad hoc network. For example, a laptop computer, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), and a portable printer brought within several meters of one another may be wirelessly linked to automatically form a PAN, where each device may have one or more interconnection technologies available to it. A BAN is a particular implementation of a PAN, whereby for example, independent nodes, or sensors, that may be located within proximity to a person, e.g., within his or her clothing, are interconnected. A design goal of a BAN is the support of a high density of heterogeneous nodes per person (about 50 per body) with data rates ranging from several hundred to several million bits per second. It can be seen, therefore, that a burdensome interface management task may quickly develop within a PAN/BAN, when multiple devices having a number of controllable interfaces are triggered to form the network.
Prior art solutions for interface management of mobile terminals have focused on providing the capability to manually activate or deactivate the interface as required. Other prior art solutions provide service and radio technology specific solutions to deactivate a communications interface, but are not generally applicable to activate/deactivate any or all of the communications interfaces on the mobile terminal as desired. For example, a prior art radio transmitter for a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) communication system may be configured to activate just prior to the transmission timeslot that is allocated for that transmitter and deactivate just subsequent to transmission during the allocated transmission timeslot, but does not allow the TDMA communication system itself to be activated or deactivated. Generally speaking, configuration of prior art communication interfaces requires a static operation that is manually implemented to either activate or deactivate the interface.
Accordingly, there is a need in the communications industry for dynamic activation/deactivation control of communication interfaces within a mobile terminal. A further need exists for a system and methodology that provides added security and reduced risk of interference through activation/deactivation of communication interfaces in response to the operational environment surrounding the mobile terminal. The present invention fulfills these and other needs, and offers other advantages over the prior art communication interface control approaches.